Tat­toos have long since expand­ed beyond an audi­ence of tough-talk­ing sailors with anchors on their biceps and remorse­ful women with tramp stamps from spring break. As the tat­too taboo has fad­ed, it has also become a means for the most loy­al and pas­sion­ate brand fans to express their devo­tion to the prod­ucts they love most.

It’s a marketer’s dream: Authen­tic brand advo­cates turn­ing their flesh into mobile bill­boards. But it’s also one, experts say, that requires a bit of kismet rather than overt manip­u­la­tion.

How­ev­er, to date, that’s not real­ly how it has played out in the marketplace.w York Mag­a­zine logo on his arm

Incentivized Ink

In July, pub­lish­er Hachette report­ed­ly put out a call for a woman to get a back tat­too for the lat­est book in Stieg Larsson’s Mil­len­ni­um series, the first of which is the best-sell­ing “Girl with the Drag­on Tat­too”.

How­ev­er, per the web­site, the pro­mo­tion was lat­er pulled after offend­ing some con­sumers.

But there are plen­ty of oth­er exam­ples.

Not­ing, “Pain is tem­po­rary. Reebok is For­ev­er,” the fit­ness brand reward­ed the fan who got the biggest Reebok tat­too at a 2014 fit­ness com­pe­ti­tion with “a year-long fit­ness-packed spon­sor­ship with Reebok worth 40,000 SEK [about $4600].”

The win­ner tat­tooed the Reebok logo on the entire­ty of her thigh. How­ev­er, each fan who was tat­tooed at the Tough Viking com­pe­ti­tion received “a com­plete fit­ness kit from Reebok [with] a val­ue of 5,000 SEK [about $600].”

In 2013, a Brook­lyn real estate com­pa­ny report­ed­ly offered its employ­ees 15 per­cent rais­es if they tat­tooed the brand’s logo on them­selves – and 40 oblig­ed.

Remem­ber the Indi­ana man who tat­tooed the 2012 Romney/Ryan cam­paign logo on his face after he was report­ed­ly paid $15,000 by a Repub­li­can sup­port­er on eBay? (He has since had laser treat­ments to have the tat­too removed and will not be sup­port­ing Rom­ney in 2016, Buz­zFeed report­ed.)

While most of these efforts have involved some kind of com­pen­sa­tion, there are count­less exam­ples of brand fans going out into the world and get­ting inked of their own voli­tion.

Take Jill Abram­son, for exam­ple. The for­mer exec­u­tive edi­tor of the New York Times has a tat­too of the Times’ T on her back, which she said she will not remove even after she was fired. There’s also rapper/entrepreneur Sean Combs, who has many oth­er names, as well as the New York Mag­a­zine logo on his arm.

Three Ps

No mat­ter what the prod­uct, each of these exam­ples includes a degree of pain, per­ma­nence, and pas­sion, which reveals an impor­tant truth about tatver­tis­ing: It’s real­ly about love or com­pen­sa­tion.

“Buzz is increas­ing­ly fleet­ing nowa­days. Even if you break through the noise you’ll be talked about for a few days at best,” said Ryan Coons, a “well-tat­ted” copy­writer at cre­ative agency Struck. “So it’s odd to pair some­thing so tem­po­rary with some­thing that is so per­ma­nent. Long after the news sto­ries fall off the front page, that per­son will still have that tat­too.”

The key is to con­nect with fans who already have brand tat­toos rather than try­ing to incen­tivize ink, he said.

“Because they did it of their own voli­tion, there is at least a small amount of authen­tic­i­ty there,” Coons adds. “When you offer up cash or fame or some oth­er incen­tive to tat­too some­one on behalf of your brand or book or movie you might as well just give them a T‑shirt for all the good you do for your brand because the con­ver­sa­tion is always, ‘What kind of per­son gets a tat­too of [insert logo]?’ not, ‘Wow, that is one ded­i­cat­ed fan of [insert brand]!’”

A recent effort from Burg­er King is per­haps the clos­est illus­tra­tion of this con­cept in action. In it, agency David found five con­sumers from around the world with Big Mac tat­toos, which it then trans­formed into tat­toos of Burg­er King’s rival Big King by adding grill marks and/or crowns to four of the five. (The fifth declined because he and his broth­er have match­ing Big Mac tat­toos.)

Organic Ink Means Authentic Love

Dana DiT­o­ma­so, part­ner at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Kick Point, agrees there’s a big dif­fer­ence between pay­ing a con­sumer to get a brand tat­too and a fan organ­i­cal­ly decid­ing to get brand­ed ink.

“If brands are pay­ing for peo­ple to do this, it takes away from what’s hap­pen­ing, but I think some peo­ple do feel so strong­ly, which indi­cates a brand is doing a good job of cre­at­ing fanat­i­cal devo­tion that results in per­ma­nent­ly putting a logo on your body for­ev­er,” she said, point­ing to com­ic book char­ac­ters as good exam­ples of brands that inspire tat­toos.

Motor­cy­cle brand Harley-David­son is anoth­er.

Per Faris Yakob, found­ing part­ner of Genius Steals, which says it is an “itin­er­ant inno­va­tion con­sul­tan­cy ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing brands, agen­cies and rebels find the awe­some,” con­sumers put sym­bols on them­selves to show affil­i­a­tion, to com­mu­ni­cate per­son­al­i­ty and to remind them­selves of some­thing and brands like Harley have long inspired the kind of pas­sion that leads peo­ple to ink their logos per­ma­nent­ly on their skin.

“The logo becomes the dis­til­la­tion of all that a brand stands for. Packed with mean­ing, a sig­ni­fi­er of the brand myth. When a fan takes on that sym­bol, it is no doubt a pow­er­ful state­ment of that per­son­’s rela­tion­ship with that myth,” Yakob said. “But, as is so often the case, when the brand has to explic­it­ly ask for this behav­ior, it taints it.”

Mitchell Smith, a graph­ic design­er at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Over­it, who has brand tat­toos of Denny’s, Grippo’s Pota­to Chips, and Sea­sons Skate Shop, echoes this sen­ti­ment, say­ing the act of spurring fans to tat­too logos feels con­trived.

“Make sure that it’s gen­uine. I have a tat­too of the Grippo’s Pota­to Chips logo, which I got after eat­ing a bag of their chips and decid­ing that I would nev­er in my life expe­ri­ence a bet­ter chip. After a trip to Cincin­nati [where Grippo’s is based], I got a tat­too of their weird­ly adorable, pota­to-head­ed, tiny-bod­ied chef mas­cot,” Smith said. “To this day, I’ve still nev­er had a chip that comes close. You want peo­ple that will vouch for your brand when some­one asks about the tat­too.”

How­ev­er, he nev­er­the­less notes a ben­e­fit to brands ver­sus less per­ma­nent logos like stick­ers in that tat­toos imply ded­i­ca­tion, regard­less of whether it is gen­uine.

“With­out tak­ing the con­text into con­sid­er­a­tion, this could at the very least make some­one take a sec­ond look at [the brand],” Smith said.

Love Them Back

While brands should gen­er­al­ly steer clear of incen­tiviz­ing tat­toos, they – like Burg­er King – can use their pas­sion­ate tat­tooed fans to cre­ate con­tent with wider appeal once they find them, as long as brands make sure to ade­quate­ly reward those tat­tooed super­fans and demon­strate grat­i­tude for their enthu­si­asm.

In fact, Smith said brands should work to keep their tat­tooed cus­tomers hap­py or risk see­ing the tat­too cov­ered up or lasered off.

“As a brand, you need to reward that and con­sid­er that they put it on their body for­ev­er. It’s expen­sive and it’s painful,” DiT­o­ma­so said. “And that’s not just at the moment they do it, but con­tin­u­ing to remem­ber [that fan] and com­ing back for years to come.”

What’s your take on tatver­tis­ing? Is it always a cheap ploy? Or is there a time and a place?